Wilderness Heart, the new album by Black Mountain is packed with succinct rock songs that pulse and pound with startling precision; it pummels you and you ask for more. This is arguable the band's tightest, most concentrated venture, but there's still plenty of raw rock energy at work. "It's our most metal and most folk-oriented record so far," McBean says. "I'm not gonna say it's our best record or the album that we always dreamt of making 'cause that's what everyone says. It's all about whee we were at the time the machines were rolling. You can't control the electricity or how your limbs were moving that day. You have to erase the visions and just go along for the ride."

"It's a Black Mountain pop record, which is to say it's nothing like pop at all," Wells says. "This was the fastest record we've ever made. We're used to spending a lot of time deliberating over the songs and spacing out recording sessions over years. Start to finish, this album was made in four months, which is something like a miracle for us. We've never worked with producers before and that was a challenge; for us to let go and let two outsiders into the process, D. Sardy and Randall Dunn , it took some growing for us to be truly open, but this album is all the better for it."

The band cites a slew of disparate influences - New Order, King Crimson, Studio 54, Alex Chilton, sunshine, Janis Joplin, Please Kill Me, Shirley Collins, Mickey Newbury, jalapeno salsa, Night of The Hunter, Cactus Taqueria, Funky16Corners podcasts, Dennis Wilson, the house blowing up in the desert at the end of Zabriskie Point but, as Schmidt points out, "Who knows how these things connect with the holistic mix of often dissonant forces that become Black Mountain?"

Indeed: Listen and find out.